


perfect speed, my son, is being there

by alittleduck



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M, an unbelievable amount of pining, crowley is a main character in this fic so, i'm not saying praise kink but ...
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-09 19:44:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19482730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alittleduck/pseuds/alittleduck
Summary: Aziraphale had always Glowed with God's Love or Light or Whatever It Was Angels Glowed With but ever since the apocalypse, Aziraphale had started to Glow so brightly Crowley couldn't stand to look at him. But because Crowley would rather go blind in both eyes than admit he was having a problem to Aziraphale, it takes seventeen fake plant emergencies, half of a deeply unpleasant sunset, an elaborately unnecessary road trip, and countless pairs of useless blackout sunglasses for him to admit that maybe, something is wrong.tl;dr Aziraphale glows and Crowley pines





	1. "let there be light" - god

It was a normal day -- for Crowley. Painfully normal. Surprisingly normal. Abnormally normal. Alarmingly --

"Oh, stop," Aziraphale told him. Crowley scowled at the ground, carefully avoiding Aziraphale’s form in the corner of his eye. “The day wasn’t that weird.”

“Are you telling this story, Angel, or am I?” Crowley asked. 

“Well, at the moment, no one is telling this story,” Aziraphale pointed out dryly and Crowley pressed his lips together in fond exasperation. 

“Aziraphale,” he growled, in a tone that didn’t come out half as harsh as he intended. “Can I continue?” 

“Of course, my dear,” Aziraphale said. “Go on.”

In the background, Anathema rolled her eyes and muttered, “finally,” to absolutely no one. 

* * *

On this freakishly normal day, Crowley woke up at noon, watered his plants, ran eight or fifteen red lights, Tempted a young man away from the priesthood and into the theater, failed to convince Aziraphale that it was a real Temption and not a Blessing because of course it didn't Angel, do you consider theater people a Blessing to this world? and paid his landlord for the first time ever. 

Granted, paying his landlord was a bit of a deviation, but it was right after the world didn’t end and, anyway, Crowley was planning on leaving the receipts lying around conspicuously for when Aziraphale next popped ‘round so that Aziraphale could be -- well, not proud of him, per se. But. Maybe he'd look at Crowley and his eyes would do that thing where they went soft and he'd put an arm on his shoulder which, at this rate, would be the closest to "getting some" Crowley would ever be. 

He knew it was a dumb plan, alright. That wasn’t the point. The point was that Crowley trying to impress Aziraphale was business as usual, even if the landlord and bill paying nonsense weren’t, which was why he continued to insist that nothing out of the ordinary had happened. 

It was because that day, Crowley was certain, definitely started out normal. He was pretty sure it even ended normal. And he was more or less confident that it most likely stayed normal all the way through. But the beginning. The start. That, he _knew_ , was normal. Nothing strange happened. Except that the _next morning_ , Crowley woke up early with a slight, barely-there headache. Crowley, it must be said, Did Not Get Headaches.

It was one in the afternoon. Earlier than he usually woke up. The sun was bright. Too bright, some might say, especially if those people were wearing all black in the middle of summer. He yelled at his plants, ate a single bite of eggs before vanishing the rest and called Aziraphale. Typical. All typical, except for the first time, he did all these things with a mild pain around his temples. A so-called "headache". 

The "headache" was odd only in that Crowley had never had one before. They were human inventions, not Angelic or Demonly ones -- though Crowley had claimed credit for proliferation of “stress migraines” around the world. He was still waiting for a commendation on that one, though. But really. It was just a matter of time with Hell, really. All that bureaucracy. Satan would get one and then it would be all the rage amongst the new Demons and that sort of proliferation would be enough to give the entire circle of hell one. 

How did one even going about getting rid of a headache? Was it alcohol? Was this why humans drank? A tiny, clearly absurd and unauthorized part of his mind had run off on a tangent thinking about asking Aziraphale for a Blessing but thankfully Crowley viciously stamped down that behavior. 

Then Aziraphale did call to invite him to the Ritz and Crowley did wait one full second to pick it up, and the headache, small matter that it seemed to be, was forgotten. 

  


* * *

Crowley rubbed his eyes and then the corners of his head. “Angel,” he asked, “why do they make it so Blessed bright in the Ritz?”

“I thought it was rather nice,” Aziraphale responded. 

“An Angel who likes the light?” Crowley scoffed.

“It’s only as bad as a Demon who doesn't,” Aziraphale teased back, gently. “But I can take a hint.” He snapped his fingers and the waiter arrived, with their check. 

Crowley thought about protesting, explaining how that wasn’t what he meant -- then realized that would mean explaining what the hell it was that he did mean. And after he explained that it was just the light and he really didn’t mind it if it meant they could stay a little bit longer together here, then Aziraphale might then say things like ‘oh, but it’s been a long night’ or ‘we should retire anyway’ and then Crowley would have to spend an inordinate amount of time in his Bentley pretending like he wasn't listening to very sad songs about love against his will and his sanity.

So, instead, he said, “No dessert tonight?” 

“Oh well,” Aziraphale let out a small, private smile, “if it wouldn’t bother you too terribly.”

Crowley gestured grandly around at the table. “I’ve got all the time in the world.”

Unexpectedly, Aziraphale frowned at that, which made Crowley’s heart seize up in his chest. “Oh,” he said, “that reminds me. Adam’s birthday is coming up -”

“Coming up?” Crowley asked. “It was last week!”

“Well, yes, technically you’re right --”

“I don’t know if you noticed the whole _end of times_ , great big war between Heaven and Hell, Horsemen riding at dawn sort of nonsense -- wouldn’t put it past you to miss all that, honestly -”

“But I wasn’t really referring to that birthday and more of, instead --”

“- not if you had a good book -’

“His birthday party.”

“Come again?” Crowley said, once Aziraphale’s words registered. 

“Well,” Aziraphale said. “It seems that young Adam, er, Young had felt -- quite reasonably, in my opinion -- deprived of a proper birthday.”

Crowley took another sip of his brandy. “And what’s that got to do with us?” he asked. 

“Well,” Aziraphale said, looking a tad overly pleased with himself, “I was thinking we could pop round this weekend. Give him a gift or something.”

“A gift?” Crowley asked. “Angel, we barely know him! _He_ barely knows _us_!” 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Crowley,” Aziraphale said. “We’re his godparents. He’ll have to love us.”

“Love -- are you even listening to yourself right now?” Crowley asked the general air around him. It really was too bright in here. 

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, a tad smugly if you asked Crowley. “I did say love.” 

Crowley scoffed. “Adam’s a child,” he said, instead of responding to that -- nonsense. 

“Adam will love both of us,” Aziraphale told him. “You needn’t be so worried!” 

“That’s not -- I’m not worried about myself, Angel,” Crowley snapped, hackles immediately up. The light seemed to be clustered around Aziraphale, now. “I mean, I am a demon who has fallen out of favor with both Heaven and Hell --”

“Dear,” Aziraphale, “he really won’t mind any of that. As a matter of fact, I think he’ll like it.”

Crowley blinked, Aziraphale’s outline leaving a black spot in his vision. “Just don’t bring him a book,” he capitulated because _of course_ he did. 

Aziraphale shook his head. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he told Crowley. “Of course I’m going to bring him a book. Every young mind needs nourishment to flower and --”

“Every young --” Crowley scoffed and shook his head, mostly in an effort to hide from the light pouring off Aziraphale. “Do you even believe that nonsense? Just admit you couldn’t really think of anything else, like the rest of us!” 

“It’s just that, even after all these years, I’m not very sure on what it is children like,” Aziraphale admitted, agreeably. 

“Well,” Crowley said, equally agreeably, “I suppose from you, actually giving away a book would be a gift.”

“Oh no,” Aziraphale said, “I hadn’t quite thought about that. I would have to choose one to leave me, wouldn’t I? Physically give it to him, and all that?”

There was a pause. 

“You could always get him candies?” Crowley suggested, at the same time Aziraphale said, briskly, 

“Well, one can never go wrong with a good set of chocolates.”

Aziraphale beamed at him. Crowley had to blink away the spots in his vision again. Maybe if he tried -- Aziraphale probably wouldn’t notice if he just looked slightly to the left of him. 

“Crowley?” Aziraphale asked, as soon as he shifted away. “What are you looking at?” 

“Nothing, Angel,” Crowley grunted. “My -- nefarious such and suchs. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”

Aziraphale wiggled his shoulders a bit. “Alright,” he said, coyly. “Don’t tell me.”

Crowley sputtered. “I did! I just told you!”

“You don’t have nefarious such and suchs,” Aziraphale said. 

“I do!” Crowley protested. 

“You don’t even have one nefarious such and such, let alone several nefarious such and suchs,” Aziraphale responded. 

Crowley scowled. “I could,” he said. 

“It’s alright,” Aziraphale said. “I forgive you. For all the nefarious such and suches you’ve ever had or will have.” He looked over at Crowley significantly and -- ow, the light was really rather bright in here. 

“You’re never going to let that one go, are you?” 

Aziraphale waggled his eyebrows. Again. 

“Oh, for Someone’s sake,” Crowley groaned. “No dessert. Let’s just get out of here.” 

“Nightcap?” Aziraphale offered and Crowley tried his Damndest to ignore the way his heart slammed against his chest. He honestly should be used to it by now. 

“Erm?” he said, then shook himself. “Of course.”

Aziraphale beamed at him. “Perfect,” he said, reaching out to grab Crowley’s arm in his. The things, Crowley thought to himself in the fond sort of tone he would have denied on the pain of death, he put up with for Aziraphale. 

* * *

Had Crowley not been a demon active on earth for the past six thousand years, he wouldn’t have known what a hangover was. However, had Crowley not been a demon active on earth for the past thousand years, he wouldn’t have known that he was incapable of getting one. 

This was not a conclusion that Crowly had come to idly. No, it was a conclusion that, after rigorous testing (read: failing to out drink Aziraphale at any number of pubs throughout London for the last six thousand years) Crowley had been forced to accept. 

In other words: Crowley was fully aware that he could not, under any circumstance, have a hangover. 

It is important to note these facts so that when Crowley woke up, blinked his eyes and worried briefly that he had a hangover, it is possible to understand exactly how much of his known reality that Crowley was already conveniently ignoring. 

Crowley did not have a hangover. What he did have was a headache -- for the second day in a row. 

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, delighted. Crowley felt his lips, very much against his will, slipping into a smile. “You’re awake.”

“Have you been watching me all night?” he asked. 

“Not all night,” Aziraphale said. “I took a break for some light reading. I even cataloged the Wodehouses.”

“Oh?” 

“Yes,” Aziraphale said. “By how much I would want to sell them. The ones I don’t want to sell at all went near the new releases under my stepstool. The ones I would never give away on the pain of death went in the backroom and then ones that I would rather burn than let touch a customers hand went out of stock. Mysteriously.”

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said. “It is far too early --”

“It’s mid-afternoon,” Aziraphale said. 

“Potato, Po-tah-toe,” Crowley said. 

“Beg pardon?” Aziraphale replied. 

“It’s an American -- oh don’t tell me you haven’t heard that before.”

“I haven’t,” Aziraphale said. 

“Oh, but everyone has. You know, tomato, tomah-toe, that whole thing.”

“I have no idea what you’re on about,” Aziraphale responded. “And I insist you stop.”

“You’re serious?” Crowley asked. 

“Of course I’m serious,” Aziraphale said and that’s when Crowley tried to look up and smirk at him. Tried is, of course, the operative word here for when Crowley attempted to look at Aziraphale, a blinding wave of light smashed through the narrow slits in his eyes and instead of smirking, smiling or indeed, doing anything with his mouth, what Crowley did was slap his hands to his eyes and howl. 

“Oh dear!” Aziraphale cried, immediately alarmed, setting the tea down next to the saucer. “Are you --” he stepped forward, which made the light worse, somehow. 

“Er,” Crowley said, who was rather embarrassed. “I think I’ve got a hangover.”

“Nonsense,” Aziraphale dismissed him. “If you were prone to that sort of thing, you would’ve gotten them in the --”

“Fifteenth century,” Crowley interrupted. “I remember, Angel.”

“I thought they were going to have to commission you a new body,” Aziraphale said. 

“Yeah,” Crowley muttered under his breath. “Honestly it was a minor …” he trailed off. “You didn’t --”

He looked at Aziraphale, who was blushing and also, yes, still blazing with God awful light. Crowley immediately looked away, this time without the yelping or undignified clutching of bits. 

Aziraphale cleared his throat. Crowley didn’t look at him. “Do you want --” he stopped. This, Crowley reflected with poorly concealed frustration, was going to be annoying. He imagined Aziraphale’s face was doing the thing it always did when he wasn’t sure what words to say next, where his hands kind of fluttered a bit aimlessly at his side and Aziraphale’s lips tried wrapping themselves around new and different words. 

Then Aziraphale’s hand touched the side of Crowley’s jaw and everything Crowley had been imagining flew out of the window because Aziraphale had never done anything like this before and Crowley wanted to see him, wanted to know what Aziraphale’s face was doing, what his eyes were saying. He kept his eyes down, though, just in case he moved and ruined everything. 

“What?” he asked and his voice came out rough. 

“Try and you know. Heal you up a bit.” Aziraphale told him. 

“Get on with it then,” Crowley told him, after a long pause that Crowley used to remind himself how to breath Aziraphale did just that. Got on with it, that is. 

Aziraphale’s hand moved from a firm grasp below his jaw up to the side of his face. The light seemed to follow Aziraphale’s hand, in some twisted horrible imitation of a flickering candle. Crowley closed his eyes and drew in a slow, shuddering breath. 

He hadn’t ever -- he’d only ever been contented with friendship, from Aziraphale, especially back when they were barely that. He’d dream -- but he’d never expected -- Aziraphale moved his hand again, to press into Crowley’s temple, fingers cascading into his hair. Crowley held himself rigid, wishing he could sink into it, could grab Aziraphale’s other hand and grasp it -- tight -- between his own. Wished he could pull Aziraphale’s fingers into his mouth slide them on his tongue -- 

Abruptly, Aziraphale withdrew. “There,” he said. “All better?” 

Crowley opened his mouth and made the soft of sound that a rat probably makes when it realizes it’s about to be swallowed whole by a snake and compressed into tiny compact little rat bits. 

“Crowley?” Aziraphale asked, and he sounded concerned. Crowley tried to look back at Aziraphale, but he couldn’t manage it for long. The light, somehow, seemed like it was -- brighter. Than before. It didn't work. Of course. Crowley snorted bitterly. He didn't even know why he bothered trying. 

“Don’t worry about it, Angel,” Crowley replied. 

“I’m afraid we’re a bit past that point,” Aziraphale replied. 

“It’s just a headache,” Crowley told him. 

“I thought you said it was a hangover?” Crowley wondered if Aziraphale’s eyes narrowed when he said this. They were usually so open and curious and inviting, unless Aziraphale was talking about Heaven, in which case they were shuttered down, boarded. Impenetrable. 

Crowley waved his hand lazily through the air as if to convey that a headache and a hangover were merely synonyms, indistinguishable from each other. 

Aziraphale gave a little huff of displeasure at this sort of conflation, but he let it slide, as Crowley knew he would. 

“I should probably be getting on home,” Crowley told the ground, against his own will. 

“You don’t have to,” Aziraphale told him. 

“Yeah,” Crowley said. “But with the headache --”

“Oh, dear,” Aziraphale said. “So the Blessing didn’t work then? Look, if you stay here, I can make you soup or -- or hot cocoa or --” 

“Aziraphale!” Crowley said. “It’s just a bloody headache. I’m not dying.”

“Dear,” Aziraphale said, with a reproving tone. “I don’t understand why you won’t just stay here. Let me take care of you.”

“That’s not the point,” Crowley protested, wildly. Was Aziraphale frowning? Smiling? He couldn’t tell. He couldn’t hear it in his voice. He’d thought he’d be able to do that, but he had gotten lazy, over the years. So used to looking and staring and stealing gazes, so used to turning and seeing Aziraphale right there beside him. 

“Then I have to ask you what the point is, dear, if it’s not -- “ 

But Crowley didn’t let him finish. He thought that if Aziraphale finished that sentence, he might just explode. “I’ve got to go, anyway,” Crowley told him. “Demonic -- business.”

“What demonic business?” Aziraphale asked. 

“Tempting and cursing and -- and meeting with operatives for evil, and such ons.”

“Goodness,” Aziraphale said. “You’d think Hell would leave you alone. I mean, they were only asked off by the bloody Antichrist.”

Crowley ignored Aziraphale this time, instead of glancing around for his coat. He wasn’t sure exactly where Aziraphale was, but a sharp sort of light seemed to be gathering by the left corner of the bookshop, right by the door. 

The light stepped forward. 

Fuck it, Crowley didn’t need his coat nearly as much as he needed to be out of here, figuring out what to do. He took a breath, swung his legs around the side of the couch, and forced himself to hold Aziraphale’s gaze for a second. 

“Well,” he said, after immediately looking away, still blinking Aziraphale’s silhouette off of his retinas, “I’m off. Ta.”

“Ta?” Aziraphale asked. 

“It’s better than ‘tickety-boo’,” Crowley said and then he pushed out of the shop before he could hear Aziraphale’s response. When he got outside, he looked up. It was a nice day out. Somehow, the sun looked dark and pale in comparison to Aziraphale. 

  


* * *

  


Aziraphale had always glowed, of course. Arrangement or not, Aziraphale was Angelic Stock, right to his very core and all Angels Shown with God’s Light. Crowley supposed he’d glowed once too, Shown with Righteous Fury. He couldn’t imagine that it ever suited him, to be filled with light like that. It suited Aziraphale, being an Angel, being Good. 

Being Good wasn’t for the Fallen, not even the Fallen who’d only ever fallen in the first place because of a few questions. Some moderate concerns. A desire to help, really. He’d been a fool. He hadn’t thought about it. He hadn’t realized what it would mean to wonder.

But maybe he could see better without all that light in his way. And maybe he understood better. And even if he sometimes -- considered his alternatives, Crowley would never choose Heaven. He would just have to look at Aziraphale, Shining with Heavenly Goodness, to know that he didn’t want Heaven with it’s Light, not if it didn’t want him without. 

Aziraphale was the reason Crowley started wearing sunglasses, way back in the fourth century -- though, of course, they weren’t called sunglasses then. Keep out the -- Light. Aziraphale was sure there was a spark of goodness deep down inside him, but Crowley knew that wasn’t true. Even kind of just okay Demons would be burned clean through if they ever got near even a drop the kind of pure Goodness that Aziraphale exuded. Crowley used to think that one day, Aziraphale would scorch Crowley clean off the earth the second he touched Crowley and Crowley didn't know if that disappointed him or not. 

If he was really -- if there was really any good in him, he’d be able to see it. He'd Glow. To touch it, like he always wanted to do with Aziraphale. But he couldn’t and he wasn’t. It was utterly, ineffably, impossible. 

Besides, the Light wasn’t too bad then. Just a faint sort of golden spread of -- Love and Happiness and Everything Stupid Like That. Crowley assumed. It wasn’t too bad then -- it didn’t even hurt to look at. It felt nice and warm and safe and it was a thousand times worse than if it had hurt. 

But it hadn’t -- after the Apocalypse, it had started to change. The light. The glow. Aziraphale’s Light. At first, Crowley thought that perhaps he had gotten out of the habit of looking sideways out of the way of the oncoming blaze.

But no -- Aziraphale had glowed, but he hadn’t burned, before. Not quite so brightly or so sharply or so painfully. Crowley used to be able to look at Aziraphale, before. 

And he still could but it was harder, like Aziraphale was sharper or brighter somehow. 

The first day, he put it down to a fluke. The second day, he also put it down to a fluke. The third day in a row of Aziraphale Glowing, Crowley went out and bought new sunglasses. Prescription, all black glasses. 

* * *

“Ah, my dear,” Aziraphale said. “I notice you’ve got new sunglasses!”

Somehow, he seemed to shine even brighter than yesterday. 

Crowley scowled and miracled himself back home, leaving Aziraphale confused and bemused on the steps of the Met. 

* * *

Aziraphale called him later the same day. Crowley looked at the phone and considered not answering. He would do this, sometimes. Not answer Aziraphale’s calls. He didn’t want Aziraphale to ever stop calling and Crowley was worried that if he picked up every single time, Aziraphale might … stop. Or get tired of him. Or finally see just how desperate Crowley was to even look at him. Crowley had spent the past six hundred years desperately metering out limited Aziraphale times, making himself wait and ignore calls and sit alone in his room with his plants. 

But after the whole -- apocalypse nonsense hadn’t happened, things had been different. There was no measuring of time, no worrying. 

Crowley couldn’t just take a nap for twenty-two years. Aziraphale would be sad. Crowley knew he would be sad, even if Crowley thought he might get over it pretty quickly and Crowley could not make Aziraphale sad. 

Reluctantly, he picked up the phone. 

“It’s me,” Aziraphale said. 

“I have caller ID, Angel,” Crowley replied. 

“Oh, I -- what’s that?” 

“It’s -- “ Crowley sighed. “Never mind,” he told him. “Technological hogwash, as you would say.”

“I don’t know that I would say that,” Aziraphale told him. 

Crowley raised his eyebrows, then remembered that Aziraphale couldn’t see him. 

“And don’t you raise your eyebrows and shake your head at me,” the little tiny Aziraphale voice was saying. “It’s not very nice to do that when I’m not there to see it. Come to think of it --” 

“Well, then,” Crowley said, knowing what Aziraphale was waiting for and hating himself for being so easy so pathetically easy. “Why don’t you come ‘round?” 

“Oh, really?” Aziraphale asked, barely bothering to contain the excitement, like he used to do in the old days. 

“Yeah,” Crowley said. “But be quick about it. I’m thinking about taking a nap.”

“Oh?” Aziraphale asked, and Crowley couldn’t tell what was in his voice. It wasn’t a familiar sound on Aziraphale. “And -- how long would you be napping, this time?”

“I don’t know,” Crowley said. “The normal amount.”

“It’s just that,” Aziraphale said, “You take quite long naps sometimes. And --” he hesitated. Crowley waited, fingers prying into the plastic phone, slowly crushing it. “A hundred years is just a bit too long,” Aziraphale finished and Crowley felt like every single string holding him there had been cut and gutted. His fingers still clung to the phone. 

“It’s not that long,” Crowley told him. 

“It was,” Aziraphale said. 

“What?” Crowley asked and he was back at attention, back at clutching the phone and waiting. 

“It was a long time. Last time. And now it would be. Longer,” Aziraphale said. “I do hope -- I don’t want you to nap,” Aziraphale told him. “Not for a hundred years.”

Crowley felt as though words expressions and possibly even breathing were a bit beyond him at the moment. “What about ninety-nine years?” he asked, inanely. Aziraphale, thankfully, ignored him.

“Come on,” Aziraphale said. “If we leave now, we can catch the sunset at Saint James’s park.”

“Oh, yes,” Crowley said. “That’s usually quite divine.”

Aziraphale frowned. “No, actually, I don’t know if that’s one of ours of -- oh,” he said. “I see what you mean.”

Crowley, unbearably, smiles at his phone fondly and waits for the familiar knock on his door. 

* * *

The sunset went poorly. Crowley had to actually sit there and watch the entire bloody thing without once getting to steal his gaze over to Aziraphale’s face or watch the corners of his mouth tip upwards, eyes softening and brows, for once, clearing themselves of stress. He didn’t get to watch the joy fill Aziraphale up like a warm cup of tea on a blustery London afternoon or see that joy spread outwards from Aziraphale and into the park. In short, Crowley did not get to watch Aziraphale at all and without watching Aziraphale, Crowley didn’t really get the whole concept of sunsets. He supposed they must have been invented by Heaven after all, though Hell did like to claim credit for the dusk. 

The next few days went, at best, equally poorly. Twice Crowley miracled himself away without explanation, thrice he unbelievably pretended to be receiving a summons from hell and seventeen times Crowley had claimed a plant emergency. Seventeen! The fifteenth time he couldn’t think of something that wasn’t ‘leaf blight’ or ‘insect rampage’ or ‘cats’ and he’d just shook his head and said, “global warming,” in the same obnoxiously sympathetic way that a well-meaning close acquaintance of a deceased millionaire might say, “the poor children” to a woman they wrongly assumed was the wife of the deceased and who was, in fact, his estranged thirty-two-year-old daughter who wasn't in the will but was well over two drinks in. 

Aziraphale’s lips got more and more pursed with each, increasingly ridiculous excuse. They reached their thinnest state during the now infamous Global Warming incident. He started making little comments like, “I’d invite you to the theater, but with things going how they are, I doubt we’d make it past the first act” or “I’ll be free for a brief five minute window between eating breakfast and opening my shop, if that isn’t too long for you to pop by for” or “if you think the planet will still be around at five, I’d love to have you over” or, finally, less subtly, “really, _you_ , Crowley, _demon of hell,_ are going to save the planet from _global warming_?” in a very, very dry voice. 

Crowley would nod tersely in response to these jabs and say nothing. Aziraphale, for all that he was an Angel of Heaven, was well and truly British and probably wouldn’t have asked Crowley what was wrong even if the world was ending and his car was a flaming wreck. It just wasn’t in his nature. 

Instead, he made his snarky jabs, invited Crowley over more and more and fretted. He did no end of fretting. He specialized in it. He fretted over tea in the morning. He fretted before bed. He fretted to customers who were trying to buy books and to customers who had long since forgotten which book they came by and instead wanted nothing more than to escape the bookstore and its crazy owner. 

Aziraphale did not like this -- change in Crowley. This change in their -- situation. Whatever it was. Friendship, probably. Aziraphale did not like to think about it deeply. 

This, Aziraphale realized, was not working. 

“Crowley,” he ventured one morning around Saint James’s park. Crowley was aggressively shredding the bread into tiny little crumbs. He grunted in response, not taking his eyes off the birds. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale asked. “I was just wondering if there was anything the matter. With you.”

“What?” Crowley raised an eyebrow. He laughed, in a boisterously false sort of way. It wasn’t very convincing. 

“Well, exactly,” Aziraphale said. “It’s just that you haven’t quite been yourself.”

“Oh,” said Crowley, body contorting sideways jerkily -- first towards Aziraphale then away from him. 

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, “like that?”

“Like what?” 

“Like now,” Aziraphale said. 

Crowley scoffed. “I’m being perfectly normal, Angel.”

Aziraphale bit his lip. This was not going quite the way he hoped it would. “Crowley --” he reached a hand out to place on Crowley’s shoulder. Crowley went stiff, then stepped away. 

“Actually, I’ve got to go,” he said. 

“But,” Aziraphale protested weakly, “the bread.”

“What?” 

“The bread.” Aziraphale pointed to the shredded bits of carbohydrates remaining in Crowley’s hand. “Don’t you dare miracle it away,” he said, as Crowley raised a hand up. 

“Oh, all right.” Another hand gesture later, and the bread was back. 

“Here,” Aziraphale said, reaching out. Crowley jerked his hand back. 

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Collecting the bread.” Aziraphale held out a hand impatiently. “Obviously.”

“And -- what, you just want me to put my hand out there, right there, next to yours, and put the bread into it?”

“You won’t die, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Aziraphale told him, without quite meaning to. 

“I wasn’t worried about that,” Crowley muttered. 

“Oh,” Aziraphale said. “Good. Because I’ve already been inside your body --” Crowley choked on the air -- “and well. I’m still here, clearly. So there must be some sort of way for us to mix our --”

“Here!” Crowley shoved the bread into the general direction of Aziraphale’s hand, though Aziraphale couldn’t help but notice Crowley’s eyes didn’t move once from the ducks. Several of the bread crumbs spilled out and onto the grass. 

“Oh, no.”

“It’s alright.”

“I should clean it up.”

“Don’t worry about it. The birds will eat it.”

“But this bread isn’t for the birds,” Aziraphale protested. “It is for the ducks and the ducks should have it.” He bent to start picking up some of the crumbs. 

“Aziraphale,” Crowley sighed. “I’ve --” 

He took his eyes off the ground. Ah, Aziraphale thought. So he _is_ avoiding me. 

Crowley squatted down next to him and together, for the next five minutes, an Angel and a Demon sat on the ground in silence, neither knowing where to look, picking bread out of the grass for the overfed ducks of St James’s park. 

This, Crowley realized forty-two seconds before Aziraphale, was not working. Unlike Aziraphale, he chose to ignore this realization in favor of stubbornly picking up more bread crumbs by blindly jabbing his hand around in the grass. 

“Do you want to head back to the bookshop Angel?” Crowley asked, head bent and voice low. 

“If that’s what you want,” Aziraphale responded, voice strangely taunt. 

“Not particularly,” Crowley replied. 

“Let’s go anyway,” Aziraphale told him. “I’ll get the scotch!”

“What, not a tea?” 

“Alcohol is for serious matters. Tea is just for mornings, lunchtime, mid-day snack and after dinner.”

“Those are all the times of the day,” Crowley protested, biting down the urge to laugh. 

Aziraphale sniffed. “Yes, well,” he said. 

Instinctively, Crowley turned to smile fondly at Aziraphale, forgetting himself for a second. As he turned, the block of black light radiating from Aziraphale was so overwhelming that Crowley stumbled and nearly fell back. Aziraphale reached out to steady him but Crowley was still turning away from the burning light, and Aziraphale pulled back before he reached Crowley. 

Another silence descended over them, this one considerably more awkward and aggressively more unacknowledged. 

When they got back to Aziraphale’s bookshop, Crowley went without speaking to the couch. Aziraphale went and got the scotch. 

“Drink up,” he said, and put it on the table. Crowley held back a wince as Aziraphale’s hand entered into his line of vision and finished the glass in one, hacking, stupid swallow. 

“Alright, dear?” Aziraphale asked, while definitely not snickering. 

“Yes,” Crowley coughed. Subtly. Through gritted teeth: “I’m great.”

“Chin up,” Aziraphale said. “Must’ve just gotten lost and slipped down the wrong pipe, I’m afraid.”

“I’ll slip you down the wrong pipe,” Crowley mumbled in response which Aziraphale, thankfully, chose to ignore. 

Crowley carefully pulled himself another glass because he was starting to feel the slightly hysterical urge to put on a third pair of glasses just to see if that would work. Or -- eye patches? Crowley could try eye patches? 

Not that anyone ever should try eye patches, even pirates, but Crowley thought he could do it. For Aziraphale. Crowley didn’t really need to see, did he? How many times did he use his eyes each day? I mean, really use them? 

But unfortunately, Aziraphale would notice the eye patches. And Aziraphale knowing that Crowley would rather go blind than spend a minute outside his company would be the only thing worse than Crowley actually going blind just to spend another minute in Aziraphale’s company so. That was out. 

Crowley knew Aziraphale would be nice about it. Well. Nice for Aziraphale. He’d say things like ‘Heaven’ and ‘but of course, I love you as I love all of God’s creatures’ and ‘chip, chip, old boy, I knew you were sentenced to burn in the fires of Hell for all Eternity you absolute Freak’. Okay, so he probably wouldn’t say the last thing. Okay, fine, so he definitely wouldn’t say the last thing. But still. 

Crowley could just picture it. Crowley would say his bit about the Angelic Light of Pure Goodness and Puppy Dogs that was only a little bit debilitating from Crowley to look at and Aziraphale would just look at him pityingly, the poor silly demon who’d let himself Fall and Crowley wouldn’t be able to bear that, he really wouldn’t. Not being looked at like that, not by Aziraphale. 

It wasn’t that Crowley wanted to be an Angel -- but it wasn’t that Crowley wanted to be a demon, either. And Aziraphale wouldn’t understand something like that, something that wasn’t one or the other. It wasn’t even that Crowley wanted to be human. Crowley didn’t. He wanted -- he wanted to be as he was, on the earth, with Aziraphale and he wanted nothing at all to change. 

Or. Well. No. He meant it. He would have been content to be given the opportunity to sit near Aziraphale, to watch him, to see him shine. It was awesome in the old, biblical sort of way, that he even got to talk to Aziraphale. 

He hadn’t -- he wanted, so badly, some days. It felt pathetic, and hopeless and inevitable in turns but Crowley hadn’t truly wanted things to change. He -- 

And now he couldn’t even do that -- couldn’t even look at Aziraphale without blinding himself. 

“After you,” Aziraphale said quietly and Crowley opened his eyes very slowly and very carefully. There was a third glass of scotch on the table. Crowley took a beat, then picked it up.

And then Aziraphale, shocking them both, picked up the bottle of scotch and took a long drink. Crowley watched as closely as he could, through his lashes. Unlike Crowley, Aziraphale didn’t choke. When he was done, he put the bottle down and patted his stomach tightly. 

“Christ, Angel,” Crowley let out a low whistle. “Save some for me next time.”

“Not the best thing to do with decades-old scotch, but.” His lips twitched up. “Liquid courage, as the humans say.”

Crowley’s stupid heart sped up against his will at those words. He licked his lips. Why were his lips so dry? “Is that ssso?” 

“Yes,” Aziraphale said. “And now that -- _that’s_ done,” he gestured meaningfully at the half-empty bottle of scotch, “I really think I ought to ask you a question.”

The blood pounded out of Crowley’s heart and into his face. It thundered past his ears. “Angel?” He asked. 

“My dear,” Aziraphale asked Crowley for the second time, more than a little tipsy and hoping it would work this time, “What the Dickens is the matter with you?” 

Crowley’s heart stopped. Oh, he thought with a dull ache. This was all. All it would ever be. “Headache,” he grunted, gaze firmly focused on the stone floor. But even the floor of the bookshop had started to radiate light. Crowley wondered if it would burn. If he could fall to the floor and burn in Aziraphale’s light. 

Aziraphale took a step closer. Involuntarily, Crowley felt himself recoil away from the light. Aziraphale was still again and something forgotten deep inside Crowley howled. 

“Aziraphale --” he started, but he had nothing to follow it up with. 

“No worries,” Aziraphale told him and Crowley, even with his eyes pressed harshly shut, could still see the tight grin he knew would flash across Aziraphale’s face. Crowley hated that smile. It was the kind of that he used around Gabriel and customers who actually managed to push themselves through several thousand layers of polite Angelic discouragement to actually buy one of Aziraphale’s books. It made Aziraphale’s glow all dull and faint and -- 

Crowley flicked his eyes up in a moment of brief hope. He could see Aziraphale’s creased face, his fussy old tartan, the little nick of the right side of his hand from a stray flame back in the third century so clearly in his mind that it had to be real. And so he looked. And then Crowley’s vision flooded with a blinding white light and he slammed his head back down into his arms, eyes searing. 

“No, actually,” Aziraphale said. “It’s not.” Crowley was silent. “It’s obvious that something is off,” Aziraphale said. “And you can’t just have had a headache for the last three weeks!” He looked at Crowley, expectantly. 

Crowley stayed silent, stayed still. Aziraphale took another long drink of the scotch. The table started to sway, out of the corner of Crowley’s eyes. 

“I am going to say some -- something,” Aziraphale said. “Something important. I am - am going to say something important! Okay. It’s just. Well.” Aziraphale faltered, rallied. “I thought -- um, after the apocalypse, and everything. I realized -- a while ago -- that I cared. Deeply. For you. And I thought --” Aziraphale stopped again. “I thought we were -- friends. Of a sort. At least.”

Something ancient and harsh and mean, wrapped around Crowley’s heart that Aziraphale had spent the last six hundred years loosening, seemed to tighten. It clamped down on either side of his throat, cutting the world in two. “We -- are,” Crowley croaked out. 

“Are we?” Aziraphale snapped.”You’re not even -- you don’t even look at me anymore,” he pointed out sharply. 

“I do!” It was true, but it felt like a lie in Crowley’s mouth. A lie and an admission, all in one. “I look at you all the time, Angel!”

Aziraphale huffed and turned away. The light dimmed but there was no relief in the loss. Crowley needed to -- he needed. He needed. He reached out his hand and grabbed Aziraphale arm. Slowly, he pulled himself up, sliding off the couch he’d been sprawled on. Turning Aziraphale around. One hand on his arm, the other reaching up to his jaw, his check. His hand shook. Badly. Aziraphale’s face under his hand. Warm. Not burning, then. 

Aziraphale shifted closer and Crowley, head still bent, closed his eyes.

Aziraphale put his hand over Crowley’s. Held him there. Stilling the tremors. Thumb stroking the back of Crowley’s hand. Silent. Waiting. Really, he thought, a little wildly, Crowley could live the rest of his life without opening his eyes.

But he couldn’t. Not really. Crowley tried to breathe and was surprised to find his own breaths tattered and erratic, beating around his throat like a windstorm. 

He lifted his head slowly off the floor and opened his eyes. There was Aziraphale: eyes kind, pupils blown wide, hand now clutching Crowley’s, his hideously outdated vest, his mouth low and slightly open, face leathery, older than time itself, blazing through every pore with Love. Crowley held Aziraphale’s hand in a vice, gritted his teeth and refused to turn away. 

And then Aziraphale started to look alarmed and Crowley thought he might be falling -- not again -- and then everything was dark at last. 


	2. "oh, that's quite bright. my bad guys" - god

“I passed out?” Crowley asked, incredulously, from Aziraphale’s bed. He’d woken up, realized where he was and what he was and was not wearing and the implications of it all had been so immediately overwhelming that his mind, in a stunningly precocious gesture of self-preservation, had immediately shut down any and all information processing centers. So it was taking Aziraphale a while to get through to Crowley. 

“I believe fainted was the word I used,” Aziraphale said. He tilted his head to the side. “Collapsed. That was another one.”

“I _passed out_?” Words like ‘fainted’ and ‘collapsed’ were also things Crowley’s mind was ignoring. 

“Yes. And it made a mess of the books.”

“The books?” Crowley asked, wondering if his brain would be considering coming back online anytime soon. 

“Well, I had to sort of make a kind of a gallant dive to save you, dear,” Aziraphale told him. “Tables were overturned. Sixteenth-century scotch bottles were broken. Books were ruined.”

“You --” He shut his mouth. “Books?” he asked. 

“Well, yes,” he said, “since you’re asking, it was very heroic of me. Quite dashing, is another word that could be used to describe my --”

“Books?” Crowley asked, again. 

“Ah,” said Aziraphale, and he started to fidget. “Nothing a quick Miracle couldn’t fix.”

“But you hate Miracling books!”

“I couldn’t very well let you fall!” Aziraphale snapped back then winced. “I didn’t want you to get hurt,” he said.

Crowley, for a second, was still. Then: “always have to play the angel, don’t you, Angel?”

Aziraphale let out a weak laugh. “Ha ha,” he said. “Yes, of course. That’s me. My predestined role, one could say.”

“If you say so,” Crowley replied. 

“The Almighty, has in fact, said so.” Aziraphale had lost track of the conversation. He didn’t know when he’d gotten so flustered or how to move around back to being cool, calm and in command. 

Crowley just hummed, infuriatingly. Like he knew better than the Almighty. Like _Crowley could_ \-- but it was no good, this ranting and raving in his mind because Aziraphale was worried that Crowley knew at least near as well. It was about knowing where you stood but right and wrong had gotten so muddled, on earth. Aziraphale took several unnecessary breaths of overpolluted London air and made one last, desperate attempt to grab hold of the conversation and drive it in the right direction. “You’re getting -- that’s not the point! The point is -- Crowley, what the hell happened?”

“Apparently,” Crowley replied dryly. “I fainted.”

Aziraphale very nearly gave up. “That’s absolutely not what I meant,” he said in a voice that so clearly wanted to be stern. 

Crowley raised an eyebrow. “Oh?” Aziraphale noticed, for the first time, how still Crowley had gone under the covers and how quiet the room had gotten. His heart gave a little, easily ignored twinge. 

“Crowley,” he said. “Something is quite clearly wrong.” Crowley did not respond. “The -- headaches,” Aziraphale elaborated and then found himself unable to stop. “the thing where you’ve stopped looking at me entirely. And bought new sunglasses. You’ve had those for more than a century and now you’re wearing two different pairs? And walking into poles? And at first, well, at first I thought it was something I did but -- it’s more than that, isn’t it? It’s like you can’t or --”

“You Glow,” Crowley snapped, interrupting Aziraphale. His ears were red. 

“Pardon?” Aziraphale said. 

“You. Glow,” Crowley repeated, louder. 

“I -- glow?” Aziraphale asked, flabbergasted. 

“No, not glow. Glow.”

“Those are the same thing,” Aziraphale said. 

“No. One has capital letters.”

“How can you verbally convey capital letters?” Aziraphale asked. 

“Like This,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale shuddered. 

“That can’t be -- you’re not having me on, are you?” he asked. “This isn’t some sort of joke?”

Ah well, Crowley thought. Well, since the gig was well and truly up … “You really Glow,” he admitted. “But like, big. Very bright. Lots of glowing. Hurts my eyes.” 

“That’s -- what?” Aziraphale asked. “Since when? Since when have I been --”

Crowley shrugged. “Only the last six thousand years.”

“But -- certainly, you’ve been looking. Not looking _looking_ of course, but I’ve seen your eyes. Your _lovely_ eyes,” he emphasized and then started stammering. “I mean -- that is -- we’ve made eye contact before.”

“It hasn’t been so bright.” Crowley clutched the covers tightly around him, hoping for the conversation to end. Unfortunately, it was never a good idea to shock Aziraphale and then hope for a short resolution. 

“I’ve always -- Glowed?” Aziraphale asked again, incredulous. “Why didn’t you tell me I glowed?” he asked, indignant. 

“Glowed,” Crowley corrected absent-mindedly. “And I didn’t think I needed to. It’s just -- Glowing. It’s the sort of thing you expect a fellow to know if he can do or not.”

“I didn’t know,” Aziraphale said. 

“You are remarkably unobservant, Angel,” Crowley said, with a sigh. 

“I am not!” Aziraphale replied, indignant. 

“You’ve spent the last six thousand years not noticing --” Aziraphale, subconsciously, leaned forward, waiting to hear what Crowley would say next. For some reason, his heart seemed like it was located in the vicinity of his throat, instead of wherever it was the damned thing normally resided. But Crowley, it seemed, was done talking. 

“I’ve spent the last six thousand years doing what?” Aziraphale asked, because he couldn’t not. 

“Glowing,” Crowley said. 

“No,” Aziraphale said. “Not noticing what?” 

“Not noticing you were Glowing,” Crowley said firmly. “Anyway, Angel, it doesn’t matter. You know now. So.”

“But I don’t understand,” Aziraphale said. 

“Ah well,” Crowley replied. “It’s probably just ineffable and you shouldn’t really be bothering yourself with --”

“Oh shut up,” Aziraphale said and Crowley smirked. “What I don’t understand,” he said, “is what changed?” 

“With the Glowing?” Crowley asked. “Simple. It got brighter.”

“But why?” 

“I don’t know,” Crowley said, “and if She doesn’t mind, I’d bloody love for it to stop.”

“But, I mean, there has to be some sort of _reason_ ,” Aziraphale insisted. “Things don’t just start glowing -”

“Glowing -”

“Right, Glowing, for no reason.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s God’s Love,” Crowley said. 

“But then why would it increase after stopping the apocalypse?” Aziraphale asked, though “failing to start the apocalypse” probably would’ve been a more accurate description than “stopping it” for what Crowley and Aziraphale did. Especially if you asked Anathema, anyone on their side, Anathema, God, Anathema, the Them, Anathema, Adam, or Anathema. 

Crowley didn’t respond. He shrugged.

“When did it start getting worse? Please. It’s important that we -- we are going to fix this, Crowley.” Aziraphale never begged. 

“After we failed to start the apocalypse -” Crowley said, hands hanging limply at his side. 

“That’s not entirely fair, is it?” Aziraphale asked. “To say we failed to start the apocalypse?”

Crowley raised an eyebrow at the wall in front of him, afraid both to look at Aziraphale and not to. Aziraphale ignored the eyebrow, anyway. 

“Besides,” he said, “that doesn’t matter. The apocalypse was stopped. We swapped bodies -- hang on, you weren’t acting weird then.”

“It started getting worse four days after the apocalypse,” Crowley said. 

“Four?” 

“Four.”

“But why four?” 

“Angel,” Crowley said. “Do you think I’d be here, functionally blind, if I knew the answer to any of these questions?” 

“There, there, dear,” Aziraphale said, making smoothing gestures at him. “I’m sure it’s been very hard --”

“It’s been bloody impossible!” Crowley exploded. “It’s been awful! Every time I leave the house I think ohh better bring the extra strength sunglasses, that’d do the trick! Only it never does and I have to cart them around all day and -”

“You really could Miracle them,” Aziraphale interjected quietly and was completely disregarded by Crowley. 

“It’s just an absolute nightmare, all this squinting. It’s got to be giving me crow’s feet. And no,” he added, catching Aziraphale’s befuddled look, “crow’s feet is most definitely not what your thinking.”

“And how do you know what I’m thinking?” Aziraphale asked. 

“It’s you,” Crowley replied, scornfully. If he said it in any nicer a tone, Crowley was worried he would burn up from the inside out, he'd be so pathetically genuine. “Of course I know what you’re thinking.”

“What am I thinking now?” 

“You’re thinking about how I can’t really know what your thinking or the bloody crab cake, I don’t know, Angel. I just know you. And I know what you think of crow’s and my feet and I’m just telling you, it’s not that, alright?” 

“Hell,” Aziraphale said. “It was the crabcake.”

“The what?” 

“I was thinking of the crabcake,” Aziraphale told him. He looked a bit put out. 

“Well, of course you were,” Crowley said. “Just look at it: perfectly cooked, inhumanely prepared and double the price of a salad. It’s the most human thing on the menu.”

Aziraphale smiled faintly at him. “That’s a lovely way to put it,” he said and Crowley fought down a growl. Now was _not_ the time and he did _not_ have the energy. 

“I’m a wordsmith,” he grunted, instead of protested. “But that doesn’t solve my -- conundrum.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said. “I don’t have any earthly idea. Was there anything unusual --”

“No,” Crowley interrupted shortly. “Nothing unusual. Temptings. Meeting with you. The usual.”

“Tempting?” Aziraphale asked. 

“Well, really, it was more of a Blessing --”

“Didn’t Adam say not to meddle?”

“It wasn’t really a meddle, more of a --”

“It’s not like Hell cares --”

“Public service --”

“I mean, it’s like you’re not even --”

“More than anything else --”

“Worried about being punished,” Aziraphale said and then froze. He turned to look at Crowley, grinning wildly, only to find Crowley gritting his teeth and pushing his hands against his eyes. This, Aziraphale decided, was something he fervently hated. A curl had fallen across Crowley’s forehead. Aziraphale did not brush it away, but it was a close thing. 

“You might be onto something,” Crowley told his hands as Aziraphale drank him in. He did not, as a rule, let himself look at Crowley too much. That way, he was sure, lead danger and Falling and humiliation, especially when Crowley figured out what all the looking was about. 

But Aziraphale could look, now, and Crowley would never find out because Crowley would never be able to look back. 

“Do you really think that Adam would do this?” 

“Do I really think that Adam would do this? No. Do I have any other ideas? Also no.”

“Should we visit Adam, do you think?” Aziraphale asked. 

“If you like,” Crowley said. “I don’t need you to come or anything --” 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Aziraphale said, already dreading the thought of leaving his bookshop unattended for a few hours, possibly days. “Of course I’m coming.”

“Oh, good,” said Crowley. “I mean, it’ll be good to have another set of hands around. We should -- the Bentley’s out back.”

Aziraphale beamed. “Lead the way, old boy.”

“Ugh,” Crowley said in response and led the way. 

* * *

The two of them stood, outside Aziraphale’s bookstore, staring at the Bentley. They stared at it in silence. They stared at it well past the point at which it was normal to stare at things, even if those things happened to be mint condition first edition vintage cars. And then, they stared at it a little longer. In fact, had Crowley, wearing his favorite black duster over top his third favorite black shirt and his second favorite of his extra black pants that he kept at Aziraphale’s for a combination of emergency coat situations, drunkenness and some misguided feeling of hope that he hadn’t yet been able to admit to himself, not been so uncomfortably dressed for a London summer, they probably would’ve stood there staring at the Bentley all day. 

“I can’t drive, Angel,” Crowley gritted out, trying to hide the fact that it had been long enough of a pause that he was now sweating profusely. “I can barely see. You’re going to have to -- ”

“Oh! Oh, yes of course! Well, I suppose that’s quite a relief then,” Aziraphale told him, “Because I was getting a bit worried that you’d -- gone senile, or something dreadful and --”

“That you were going to have to take care of me, like a bloody invalid?” 

“Oh,” Aziraphale said. “I wouldn’t have minded.”

“You would’ve,” Crowley said. “No one wants to care for another person like that -- especially one that’s not right in the head.”

“I defied Heaven for you,” Aziraphale told him and Crowley did not know how to handle that at all. 

“You -- it’d be terrible,” he said. "For you. If I was really bonkers."

“I wouldn’t mind,” Aziraphale said. “I wouldn’t mind, my dear.” And that was it, Crowley could not stand to hear or listen to this for another second without screaming, sobbing or dry humping Aziraphale’s leg like some horny teenage girl in the backseat of a Camero on her prom night. Or, possibly, if he was unbearably lucky, all three. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Crowley said.

“It does,” Aziraphale insisted. “It matters to me very much that’d you’d be -- well cared for in your old age. And really, who else would remember that you actually like Queen or that you eat your yogurt with raisins or --”

“It’s -- I’m not -- I’ve not gone senile!” Crowley snapped. “And I _don’t_ like Queen. I loathe Queen,” he added, unconvincingly. 

Aziraphale, Crowley knew without even looking, was probably giving him the sort of look that made Crowley tingly all over, like he was peering straight through Crowley and seeing every terrible thought he’d ever had and not minding. As if he’d just Known Crowley, down to his bones, especially the worst bits. As if he’d known and hadn’t cared. 

“If you say so, dear,” Aziraphale acquiesced and even without looking at him, it sent a shiver up Crowley’s spine. 

“Great,” he said, sarcastically. “Now that we’ve covered the fact that I’m not senile, and that I just can’t drive, can we --?” He gestured elaborately at the Bentley. 

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, blushing. “Right.”

They stood there for another few minutes, looking at the car with what Aziraphale would’ve called mild trepidation and Crowley would’ve called bone-deep agonizing terror. 

“ _You’re_ going to have to drive the car,” Crowley said, pointedly. 

“I’d realized that, thanks,” Aziraphale responded tartly. 

“Oh fuck me,” Crowley said, going a little bit green, as he replayed his own words back at him. “ _You’re_ going to have to _drive_ my _car_.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said. “Precisely.” He took a deep breath. “Well,” he said. “There’s nothing else to it.” 

He opened the passenger's seat. 

“Wrong door,” Crowley told him. 

“I just thought,” Aziraphale told him, softly, “that it might, you know, hurt your eyes if I were to be -- well, already seated.”

Crowley let out a short little noise that Aziraphale didn’t understand. Then, slowly, he brushed past Aziraphale’s arm and into the car. Aziraphale noticed as their shoulders touched, that Crowley’s hands were shaking -- quite badly. 

Aziraphale, also as a rule, did not let himself spend much time thinking about touching. Consequently, he had spent most of his six thousand years on earth thinking about not thinking about touching. But in all those centuries, he had never wanted to reach out and place a hand over the top of someone else’s as bad as he did then, watching Crowley settle himself blindly into the passenger's seat of the car he knew better than the back of his hand. 

Aziraphale could do it, too. Crowley didn’t need to look at him to be touched. Aziraphale could rub his forefinger on Crowley’s knuckle, sink his thumb into the tense knot on the back of his hand. Let his hand still, entwining his fingers with Crowley’s long thin ones. Aziraphale could see it with a painful sort of clarity. But it was exactly these sorts of thoughts that were absolutely no use to Crowley -- especially not now. Especially not while Crowley was injured. Aziraphale hurt Crowley, just by being near him. Touching him would only make matters worse. 

Aziraphale walked around the car and put his hands on the wheel. 

“I’ve never actually driven before,” he admitted. 

“Lord,” Crowley told the side window. “A little help?” 

“Shush, you. I’m thinking.” Aziraphale wiggled around in his seat a bit, clapped his hands and then the car started to float. 

Immediately, Crowley flung his hands out on either side of him. “Angel!” he howled and Aziraphale put the car back down immediately. “What the hell are you doing?” 

“Are you afraid of heights?” 

“No,” Crowley hissed, petulantly. “People might notice.” 

Aziraphale frowned at him, but settled the car back down. “But, dear, you're injured.”

“Shut up,” Crowley muttered. 

“No,” Aziraphale said, “honestly. You’re injured and we both know I can’t drive, so unless you’ve got any bright ideas --”

Crowley muttered something under his breath. 

“What was that?” Aziraphale asked, frowning. He started to lean forward to hear Crowley better. Crowley, seemingly unconsciously, shifted his body away and Aziraphale felt something raw and hopeless settle into him at the sight, at the absolute wrongness of living in a world where Crowley couldn’t stand to be around him anymore. 

“You just have to imagine you can do it,” Crowley told him from his corner of the car. 

“Are you sure?” Aziraphale asked. Crowley did not send him a sardonic look, but Aziraphale imagined that he did. It wasn’t the same as if it had actually happened and in some ways, worse. Aziraphale was sure that imagining he could drive would go about as well as imagining Crowley could bear the sight of him. 

“How do you think I’ve managed it for the past millennia?” 

“Well, I’d -- I’d never really thought about it,” Aziraphale said. “You just turned up with that bloody sleek thing sixty-odd years ago and you seemed so pleased with it and yourself that I never really questioned it.” He paused, thoughtfully. “I suppose I always thought you’d learned to use it.”

Crowley made a noise in the back of his throat. It might've been a snort. Or a snicker. Aziraphale chose not to address it. Instead, he wrapped both hands around the wheel and imagined he was driving. 

He closed his eyes. He saw the road before him. The other cars on the road. Maybe even other people? Aziraphale couldn’t remember. Oh! The trees! He could remember those. Lovely trees. 

“It helps,” Crowley said in a voice that was filled with neither infinite patience nor infinite understanding, “if you press the gas pedal.”

Aziraphale did and Crowley honest to God _screamed_ as the car shot forward then, just as suddenly, stopped. Aziraphale’s foot was off the gas pedal. 

“What was that, Angel?” Crowley screeched. “You could’ve killed both of us! Or worse -- scratched my Bentley!” 

“I imagined!” Aziraphale protested. “I closed my eyes and --”

“You closed your eyes?” Crowley howled. 

“Only for a second.” Aziraphale squirmed a little, wishing Crowley would calm down, just a little bit. 

“ _You closed your eyes while you were driving_?” 

“So I could see the trees,” Aziraphale told him, meekly. 

“The _what_?” Crowley asked. His voice was doing that funny thing where it got all high and screechy on the ends. 

“You’re getting hysterical,” Aziraphale told him.

“I’m --” Crowley cut himself off with a strangled sound. 

“Besides,” Aziraphale protested. “I was only trying to picture the trees because I was trying to imagine driving.”

“What,” Crowley asked in a dangerously low voice, “in the name of Gabriel’s saggy left tit do trees have to do with driving?” 

“It’s just that,” Aziraphale told him cheerfully. “I always see such lovely ones. Especially when you take us out to the country --”

“Aziraphale! You need to imagine driving! Not _being_ driven!”

Aziraphale blinked. “Really?” he asked. 

“Yes!” 

“But surely,” his brow furrowed. “Surely, it’s better I imagine being driven. Because if I’m doing the imaging, then it’s the Bentley that’s doing all the driving, right? I’m being driven by the Bentley.”

“Angel,” said Crowley. “I hope you’re not implying that my car drives me around.”

“No,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley calmed himself, minutely. “Of course not. I’m saying that you’re -- well, actually, yes. That is what I’m saying.”

“I drive my car! My car does not drive me!” 

“You’re getting hysterical again, dear.”

“You’re getting hysterical,” Crowley mocked. It was not a particularly accurate mockery of an Aziraphale, nor was it a spectacular funny one. Nonetheless, these facts did not stop Aziraphale from closing his eyes, somewhat huffily, and pushing the gas pedal for the second time. 

This time, the car rolled off the curb, slowly, and then came to a complete halt. 

“There we go,” Aziraphale said. “Easy does it.”

"Oh, yes,” Crowley said. “You’ve really got it. At this rate, we’ll end up in Tadfield sometime next century.”

“That’s not very helpful,” Aziraphale told him. 

“Oh,” Crowley said. “I didn’t realize I was meant to be helpful.”

“Usually, you’re not.”

“Ha ha,” Crowley told him. “I’m always helpful.”

“You can’t even drive,” Aziraphale pointed out, a little mischievously. 

“Oh for the love of -- me!” Crowley snapped. “Alright. Close your Blessed eyes.” Aziraphale, hesitantly, did. “Now, imagine you are in a car.”

“I am in a car,” Aziraphale said in the sort of voice one might use talking to someone who didn’t believe in vaccinations. 

“Obviously,” Crowley said. The eye-roll was heavily implied. “But you have to picture it in your mind. Picture it as exactly as you can. The steering wheel. The gas. The brakes. Please for the love of Her, don’t forget to picture the brakes.”

“That's rich, coming for you.”

Crowley, generously, ignored that. “Even the windshield wipers. Picture them. Now imagine your hands are on the wheel. Really feel it. It helps to, er, put your hands on the wheel.”

Aziraphale raised an eyebrow that Crowley couldn’t see but could easily imagine. 

“And?” 

Crowley smirked. “Push the gas pedal. But,” he emphasized, “only the one in your mind. The key is that you have to really believe that you’re going at the perfect speed. You are driving the car. You are driving the car correctly. You are pressing the gas pedal. Just don’t actually press the gas pedal. Get it?” 

“Yes,” Aziraphale said and then the car shot forward violently. 

“Stop! Fuck! Shit! Stop! For the love -- Aziraphale, please!” 

Aziraphale did not stop. Crowley’s grip on the door handle was completely white. 

“Dear?” Aziraphale asked and then _turned his entire head around to look directly at Crowley._

“The road!” Crowley howled. “Angel! The road!” 

“Don’t worry,” said Aziraphale, _who was still not looking at the road,_ “I’m just imagining that there are no cars.”

“That’s -- not the way it works,” Crowley said weakly. 

“Oh,” replied Aziraphale. And then: “why not?” 

“Because!” Crowley sputtered. “Because then you’re -- disappearing cars, and there’s people in them and they aren’t getting where they need to go --”

“My dear,” Aziraphale said serenely, “just because they aren’t getting where they _intend_ to go doesn’t mean they aren’t getting where they need to go. And besides,” he turned to look at the road, finally, “you’re injured, possibly grievously. It’s much more -- it’s important.”

Crowley didn’t know what to say to that. He did know that his heart, which had pretty much stopped beating entirely since Aziraphale took the wheel, had started hammering unbearably in his chest. He licked his lips. 

“You --” he started to tell the blindingly bright spot in the corner of his vision that was Aziraphale. 

And that’s when Aziraphale wrenched the steering wheel in a complete three-sixty, skidded off the road briefly and violently flung the car around. 

“The rubber!” Crowley yelped. "Those wheels haven't been changed since --"

Aziraphale waved his -- “The steering _wheel_! Put your hand back on the steering wheel,” Crowley hissed. 

“You worry too much,” Aziraphale told him. “I fear you might be a bit of a control freak, darling.”

“I’m not,” Crowley, who hadn't released his vice-like grip of the door handle, objected. “You -- you’re the control freak.”

Aziraphale chuckled genially because he was that much of a bastard. “I must say, I’m surprised at the issues you’re having with my driving. You’re always roaring around, breaking speed limits, miracle pedestrians out of your way, parking terribly and vanishing the tickets --”

“Yes,” Crowley pointed out like it should be obvious. “But I know the rules. I’m -- I know how to drive I just. Don’t want to. You -- you don’t even know what the speed limit is! This is beyond vanishing a few parking tickets -- you’ve created lanes out of thin air where there weren’t lanes before!”

Aziraphale frowned, thinking it over. “Well, it’s better this way, isn’t it?” 

Crowley thought desperately. “Not for the trees,” he said. “What with, global warming … and all …” he trailed off. He didn’t need his sight to know that Aziraphale was staring at him _again_ instead of the road. 

“Really dear,” Aziraphale asked, “what is with you and this whole global warming business?” 

“I just think,” Crowley said, thinking about global warming for the very first time in his very long life, “that it’s the most important issue of our time. I’ve thought it for quite a while now, and I honestly think it’s quite telling that you haven’t noticed.”

“You have?” 

“I have!” Crowley lied, trying to ignore the fact that Aziraphale was still, somehow, _driving_. But it was strange -- as the words formed in his mouth to continue the lie, they started getting stuck. "Recently," he added, quickly, though he wasn't sure why. "Begun to care."

“Oh,” Aziraphale said. “Well.” He hemmed and hawed for a few seconds. “That’s jolly good, then. Should we -- should I --” he clapped his hands. Suddenly, there were tens of hundreds of trees lining the road. 

"Steering wheel! Steering wheel!" Crowley didn't know why he bothered at this point. Aziraphale put his hands back on the steering wheel.

"Really," he said. "This is a most surprising attitude, coming from you. You haven't even mentioned my trees," he added petulantly. "I think they're lovely."

Crowley was not equipped for this. 

“Angel,” he said patiently. “Those are very beautiful -- cherry trees. But they won’t live. I mean, this isn’t Asia and anyway, planting strip like this? You’re going to want to line them with native shade trees, increase the canopy cover, from hardy native stock,” and as Crowley spoke, he began to realize that maybe he did have some opinions on global warming and possibly even ones on climate change, a word he had never before used. Because it was all just plants, wasn’t it? And Crowley _liked_ plants.

“Point taken,” Aziraphale said, cutting him off. The trees vanished. 

“You could’ve left them up,” Crowley said. 

“Really?” Aziraphale responded dryly. “After everything you just said?” He shook his head. “No, I thought that was best left to the experts.”

“Why’d you go and bloody do that?” Crowley asked. “It’s not like “the experts” can miracle up hundreds of trees like you just did!”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said slowly, “I was talking about you.”

“You were talking about what?” 

“Since you -- care. About global warming and all. And you -- well, you know so much about soil and plants and green things, that I thought.” He made a gesture that somehow managed to convey the hopeless outdated ‘get with it old boy’. 

Crowley gaped. 

“Look, I’ll even stop the car,” Aziraphale literally stopped the car, and left it idling in the middle of the road while Crowley continued to gap at the vaguely warm and yellowish glint that was the edge of Aziraphale’s arm. 

“What if another car comes?” Crowley asked and Aziraphale didn’t respond and Crowley started to remember why’d he’d made the Arrangement in the first place, that under the softness and books and love there was a flaming sword and unyielding obedience. He remembered that Aziraphale was powerful. But now, he wondered, what had happened to Aziraphale’s obedience, to Aziraphale’s hard core deep down inside that didn’t let him do things like go for drives with Crowley or Fall. 

“Right,” Crowley said. “Why don’t you pull over --” he blinked and they were on the side of the road. “That’s cheating, Angel,” Crowley told Aziraphale, but his voice was unbearably fond. He hoped Aziraphale couldn’t hear it in his voice. 

“Sorry,” Aziraphale said, but he didn’t sound very guilty. Crowley wanted to touch his cheek. Hold his hand. Kiss him. Be kissed by him. 

Crowley pushed the thoughts away and focused on the trees. It was nice, he thought, planning it out. Thinking about what would go best where and what -- “of course,” he reminded Aziraphale, “we’ll have to come back and frighten them, every now and then.” We. It rolled off his tongue without permission, without pause, without stopping by his brain and checking it. 

But Aziraphale didn’t question it. “Frighten?” 

“Oh yes,” Crowley told him. “Got to make sure they’re on their best behavior.”

Aziraphale said something Crowley didn’t hear. Crowley wanted -- he wanted to turn and face Aziraphale and ask him what he said. But Crowley couldn’t do that. It would hurt. In the real, physical way. Not in the way it normally did, to look at someone so good and so kind and so blessed holy. It would actually, physically hurt and Jesus Christ Himself but Crowley was pathetic, wasn’t he. 

“Done,” he told Aziraphale, even though he wasn’t, not really, because he wanted to leave this place and these thoughts. 

But as Aziraphale pushed the car back into the road, Crowley’s stomach lurched, ill with the wrongness of the scene. Sitting in the passenger's seat, not looking at Aziraphale. When had things gotten so away from him? 

Very quietly, Aziraphale said, “thank you. For letting me drive your car.”

“No one else I’d rather have do it,” Crowley found himself muttering against his will. 

Aziraphale huffed. “You don’t have to be quite so sarcastic, my dear. I’m not that bad.”

With a rising sense of terror, Crowley felt stupid words of explanation and apology and -- worst of all -- love, crawling up his throat. He opened his mouth. Oh Somebody. Hell. Crowley bit his tongue. “Fuck,” he said, “that fucking hurt.”

“Oh, no! What did you --”

“Bit my tongue,” Crowley said, and the honesty washed over him like a cool blanket. This, he thought in a very detached calm, is not a good development. He glanced around the car, desperately, until his eyes hit upon the radio. 

“Do you mind --?” Crowley gestured at the radio box. 

“Hm?” Aziraphale asked. “Oh, yes, yes, of course. Go right ahead.”

Crowley put on the best of Queen, which was the only thing in the Bentley, turned the volume up to Miraculous heights, and pretended not to notice when Aziraphale flinched. They didn’t talk for the rest of the ride. 

* * *

They made it to Adam’s house in what could be conservatively termed record time. It probably broke speed records. Sound barriers. It definitely broke several local and international laws. Had Aziraphale allowed any other car to enter the road between Tadfield and London, they probably would’ve thought it looked quite impressive. 

Adam did not look surprised to see them. “Right,” he said, gesturing them in. “Reckon there’s time to change?” 

“Beg pardon?” Aziraphale asked, standing flummoxed on the steps outside Adam’s house. He hadn’t even knocked. 

“For Armageddon,” Adam said. “And all.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said. “Oh dear.” He turned to Crowley, who flinched almost imperceptibly. 

“It’s really more of a -- personal -- call,” Crowley ground out. 

This appeared to disappoint Adam, whose shoulders drooped. 

“But!” Aziraphale added, quickly. “With lots and lots of danger!” 

“Yeah?” Adam asked, perking up. “Can I get Them?” 

“No,” Aziraphale said neatly. Adam looked crushed but didn’t think to question it. The thing about Aziraphale was that while he really seemed quite nice it was easier to move 4,098,500,000 kilograms (incidentally, the weight of the Romanian Palace of the Parliament, the heaviest building in the world), of wood, steel and concrete than it was to move Aziraphale off a course action. “Do sit down.” He gestured around them and there were several plump, purple armchairs clustered around a cozy-looking fireplace that Adam couldn’t say he ever remembered seeing before. 

He took a seat. “So, whassit?” 

“It started,” Aziraphale made an aborted effort to turn to look at Crowley for confirmation. “Er, dear. If you wouldn’t -- would you mind terribly -- no? -- I’ll just give it a go, then, shall I?”

“What?” Adam asked. 

Crowley still wasn’t speaking and Aziraphale didn’t want to risk hurting him more by turning around. Still -- he wasn’t sure what to say. “Crowley is having some issues. With his eyes. They aren’t working perfectly.”

“Really?” Came Crowley’s voice from behind Aziraphale, drenched with sarcasm. Aziraphale’s relief at hearing Crowley speak would have, in a more literal world, knocked him off his feet. In this one, he only rocked backwards, clutching a hand to his heart, like the kind of Victorian dandy he had never truly stopped being. “That’s what you’re going with, Angel? My eyes don’t work perfectly?” 

“It’s just that,” Aziraphale began. “I didn’t want to step on your words, so to speak.”

“Step on my -- what the hell does that even mean? No, forget it,” he said, when Aziraphale opened his mouth to explain. “I don’t really want to know.” He turned to Adam. “My eyes are working just fine,” Crowley said, “it’s the rest of the world that isn’t quite cooperating.”

Adam, quite clearly, had no idea what they were talking about. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Adam told them. 

“It’s just that I see this great big blinding light whenever I look at him!” Crowley gestured at Aziraphale. “I’m going bleeding blind!”

“Oh,” said Adam. Then: “Wait, you’re not blind?”

“Not bloody yet,” Crowley said. 

“Because,” Adam continued. “It’s just that I did always think you were sort of blind because of the sunglasses and the part where you hit Anathema with your car. She’s very careful,” Adam told them solemnly. “But we’re all the good guys, so it had to have been an accident.”

“Oh for -- someone’s sake!” Crowley snapped. “I’m not a “good guy”, I’m a demon! From hell!”

Adam widened his eyes. He turned to Aziraphale. “Is that really true?” he asked. 

“Er,” Aziraphale told him. “He is a demon. But,” he added, looking nervously around the flat. “But he’s really a rather decent one.”

“What’s that?” Adam asked. 

“Decent is another word for good,” Aziraphale said. There was a large, swooping sensation in the pit of Crowley’s stomach. “He’s one of the, ah, ‘good guys’.” Crowley thought he might throw up. Throw up, or combust into flames or pull Aziraphale down into a deep searing kiss or something else that equally unseemly or unpleasant. 

“But he’s a demon,” Adam pointed out. 

“He’s a good demon,” said Aziraphale and this seemed to be good enough for Adam. 

“Well, that’s all right then. I wouldn’t want any of that bad magic hanging around here.”

“Shut up,” Crowley told him. “I can’t -- I’m not --”

“Crowley, dear,” Aziraphale said, in the sort of stern voice that Crowley didn’t like to admit made him feel a little weak around the knees, “have a seat. Let me handle this.”

“Alright,” he said, but he said it grudgingly and a little bit sulkily, so that Aziraphale would Know that Crowley didn’t stand for this sort of treatment, this being taken care of nonsense.

“He’s hurt,” Aziraphale told Adam. 

Adam did not look suitably alarmed. Instead, he looked excited -- even a little thrilled. “Is it Hell? Did they hurt him? Do they need a good, you know, one-two?”

“Sorry, a what?”

“A good, you know, one-two,” Adam repeated, bringing his fists up and pantomiming boxing. 

“Er, no. I don’t think,” Aziraphale added quickly. “We don’t know what’s wrong.”

Adam now looked confused. “Then why’d you come to me?” 

“We thought you might be able to help,” Aziraphale said. 

“Why?” 

Aziraphale did not have a good answer to that. “Er,” he said. He floundered. “You are the Antichrist.”

Adam sighed. It wasn’t a world-weary sigh. It wasn’t a very wise sigh. It wasn’t even tired. It was the sigh of a mildly annoyed eleven-year-old boy. “That means I’ve got a lot of power,” Adam said. “I can tell my dad to shove it and he _will_.” That was a lot of power, Aziraphale thought. He wasn’t entirely sure he could do the same. Well. Maybe if Crowley was there. Definitely, if Crowley was hurt he could say it. But would Upstairs actually shove off, ever? Aziraphale wasn’t sure they were capable of it. 

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, when he realized Adam was waiting for him. 

“So I can do loads of stuff like that,” Adam said, “but I’m rubbish at the puzzle-solving sort of stuff. That’s what Anathema does.”

“Who?” Crowley asked. 

“Oh,” Aziraphale tutted and muttered something inaudible. “Don’t mind him,” he told Adam. “He remembers who Anathema is. We all do. Er, don’t we?” 

“The witch?” Adam asked, confused as to why he was being put on the spot.

“The witch?” Aziraphale tried to confirm in a confident and assuming manor and instead confirmed in a cautious, uncertain fashion. 

“She lives just down the street and two blocks over. She’s a witch.” Adam paused. “Does this mean I can go now?” he asked. “Because this is very boring and I’m supposed to meet my friends at three.”

“It’s only noon,” Aziraphale pointed out. 

“Ah, let the boy go,” Crowley said. 

“But it’s boring,” Adam said. “I mean, no offense or anything. You two just aren’t very interesting.”

Aziraphale did not know how to take this in. He kind of just blinked. Then he grabbed Crowley’s arm and vanished them both out of the house without a word. 

“That’ll show him,” Aziraphale told Crowley briskly, once they’d both regained their bearings. 

Crowley leaned over and vomited on the sidewalk. 

“Sorry dear,” Aziraphale told him. “Teleportation really works better if you’ve eaten something beforehand and --” 

Crowley stalked off away from Aziraphale and in the exact wrong direction to Anathema’s house. 

“Dear,” Aziraphale called. 

“Fuck off,” Crowley told him. 

“Right, that’s all well and good and you’re completely angry and I do understand that --”

“Fuck off,” Crowley repeated. 

“Yes, well, it’s just that you aren’t exactly -- going in the right direction.”

Crowley froze. 

“Her house is. Er.” Aziraphale gestured behind him, away from Crowley. 

Slowly, Crowley took a step backward. 

“Oh,” Aziraphale said. “I’m sorry. Wait, one second. I’ll get out of your hair.” He lifted himself gently into the air, letting Crowley open his eyes and pass beneath him. It felt wrong, being alone and above the world, in a way flying normally didn’t feel. He landed as soon as Crowley was past him and together, they walked up to Anathema’s door. 

She slammed it in their face. 

* * *

Aziraphale looked at the closed door, and then knocked again. No answer. He raised his hand up to knock a third time when the door, abruptly, opened. 

“Oh! Hello!” 

“Who are you?” Anathema, who barely recognized either of the two men replied, sharply. 

“Er --” Aziraphale said. 

“That there’s Aziraphale,” Adam said for all of them, poking his head out from behind Crowley. Wait, what? Aziraphale spun around and -- sure enough. One Antichrist. Standing behind him. Smiling sheepishly. “And he’s Crowley. I thought they were dead boring but then I remembered that in my book, one of the characters was cursed by an evil witch and then I thought _Crowley_ might be cursed and then I was just here! Are curse’s really real?” he asked. “Because they said there would be danger and excitement, only it had just been really boring talking and some yelling but I personally think curses are really exciting.”

“Curses aren’t exciting,” Anathema said. “They’re extremely dangerous.”

“Exactly,” Adam said, cheered to be understood at last. 

“They shouldn’t be played with,” Aziraphale added. “Especially not by children without -- supervision or something.” He was, Crowley knew, trying to be helpful. He was, Crowley also knew, not succeeding. 

Anathema raised both her eyebrows at Aziraphale. One of her greatest regrets to date was that she couldn’t raise one eyebrow. “I’m not doing another apocalypse,” she warned him. 

“No, no,” Aziraphale said, in a voice Crowley was sure he genuinely believed to be reassuring and not stuff and condescending. “We’re not here about that whole mess at all. No,” he repeated, crinkling up his nose. “That’s just not on.”

Anathema crossed her arms. This, Crowley thought, eyes and scowl firmly focused on the ground, was not going well. “Then what’s it about?” 

“I think he’s cursed,” Adam said, again. Helpfully. No one really seemed to listen, which was the trouble with adults. 

“Adam?” Anathema asked, noticing him for the first time. “How did you -- where’s your bike?” 

“Oh,” Adam said. “They gave me a ride.” He gestured at Aziraphale and Crowley then turned back to Anathema and made a face. “They did this weird thing where they disappeared which was weird and super lame and then I kind of stepped forward after them, because I'd thought about the curse thing, and then I was here.”

Crowley snorted. Aziraphale wanted to shoot him a reproachful glance, but stopped himself. Remembering. He couldn’t do that anymore. It was weird, missing someone standing right behind you. 

“So that’s what you’re up to now?” Anathema asked Aziraphale. “Hitting people with bicycles wasn’t enough?” 

“You,” Crowley growled, “hit my car. Not the other way around.”

“Dear,” Aziraphale cajoled. “That’s not helping.”

“It’s your car?” Anathema asked. 

“Ah,” Aziraphale said. “That’s actually what we’re here about.”

“Driving lessons?” Anathema sounded incredulous. “You’re here about driving lessons?” 

“Curses,” Adam reminded everyone, for what he really hoped would be the last time. “I thought you could help because you’re a witch and all.”

“I’m not a witch,” Anathema said. “I’m an occultist.”

“Well, aren’t they the same thing?” he asked. 

Anathema paused a second. “Not technically,” she said, in a very frosty tone.

“That’s right!” Adam chimed in, eagerly. “A witch is an evil woman who lives alone and an occultist helps people with their eyes!” Then Adam’s own eyes widened in surprise. “That’s why you wanted to talk to Anathema! Because his eyes are all messed up!”

“That’s not what an occultist -- hang on, what do you mean, his eyes are all messed up?”

“He can’t see,” Aziraphale said. 

“No,” Adam corrected. “He can see. He just can’t see Aziraphale.”

“ _He_ is standing right here,” Crowley said in a tone that clearly wanted to be sardonic. It wasn’t. 

“Yes, right. Sorry.”

“Thank you,” Crowley said but when everyone turned to look at him, he wasn’t really sure what to say. “Aksdif,” he said. He shook himself then tried again. 

Anathema listened carefully to his entire explanation. Twelve minutes and forty-eight seconds of hemming and hawing and one ‘Aziraphale Glows very brightly and that’s bad’ later, it was done. Anathema uncrossed her arms. 

“Right, then,” she said. “That’s a witch's curse.”

“Cool,” Adam said. 

“Fuck,” Crowley said. 

“Right on,” Aziraphale said. “But it’s just, if you wouldn’t mind, we were just wondering how one might, er, fix it?” 

“I don’t know,” Anathema said. 

“Excuse me,” Aziraphale said, in a dangerous pleasant voice. Crowley tried to hide his smirk. “But I think you must have made some sort of mistake.”

“No,” Anathema said. “I don’t know how to fix it. I’m sure of that.”

“But --”

“Only Crowley can fix it. Probably. I’ll have to do some research, but that’s usually how these things go. Witches curses and whatnot.” Anathema cut Aziraphale off. 

“You think we haven’t thought of that?” Crowley hissed back. “You think I enjoy keeping my eyes shut? The headaches?” 

“Eyes?” Anathema asked, suddenly more interested then she’d been all afternoon. 

“Er,” Aziraphale said. “Yes. His eyes.” Aziraphale turned to Crowley. “They’re quite lovely eyes, you know. It would be a shame for you to have to hide them.” 

Crowley took a staggering step backwards. “Don’t look at me,” he growled and Aziraphale shrunk back a bit, hurt. 

“Right, of course,” Aziraphale said. 

“Wait,” Anathema interrupted. “Do you only feel this pain around Aziraphale?” 

“Do you know any other Angels around?” Crowley asked. 

“I don’t.” She looked at him with a sharp, piercing gaze. “Do you?” 

“I --”

“No,” Aziraphale admitted. “We haven’t -- seen anyone else, really. Just the two of you.”

“Why are you two together, then?” Anathema asked. 

“Well,” Aziraphale said, struggling not to look back at Crowley. “It’s a long --”

“No,” Anathema said, “I mean, right now. Why don’t you just stop hanging out --”

“I’d rather go blind,” Crowley told her and his bit down on his own lip. “I did not mean that,” he told Aziraphale, rather desperately. 

“Oh,” Anathema said, “interesting. Do you find yourself compelled to be more truthful?” 

“Yes,” Crowley snapped. 

Oh. _Oh_. “So when I asked -- about the car --” Aziraphale said. “You weren’t being sarcastic at all, were you?” Crowley pressed his lips tightly together, trying to keep down the words that were battering about in his throat. 

Anathema went back to her book while Crowley struggled with himself. 

“Wait,” Aziraphale turned to Anathema plaintively. “Would you please help us? It’s just that I’m not too sure what to do anymore and well, I was thinking that your great great great --”

“You thought Agnes might’ve said something?” Anathema asked, flatly. “You thought you were important enough -- _this_ was important enough for a prophecy.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. A statement spoken with so much disdain that the paisley wallpaper in the bathroom of Aziraphale’s bookshop started to peel.

“Well,” Aziraphale struggle valiantly forward, “it’s just that we were in the last one --”

“The one about the end of the world?” 

“Yes,” Aziraphale agree, miserably. 

Anathema made a gesture that made Azirphale feel quite foolish indeed. “And anyway,” she added. “You’re too late. I’ve quit being a professional descendent.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said. “But I bet you haven’t quit being a witch!”

Anathema didn’t reply for a minute. “I guess you better come on in,” she said. “Adam, you run along back home.”

“But --”

“We’re just going to be researching,” she told him. “Reading old books. It’s really boring.”

“That sounds really boring,” Adam agreed. “I think I’ll go telephone Pepper. We can play Curse Breaking and it’ll be loads more exciting than whatever you lot end up doing.”

He left, voice trailing away after him and as soon as he was out of sight, Aziraphale and Crowley followed Anathema inside her house. 

“Now,” Anathema said, precisely, hands dusting off her carefully pleated plants. “What can you tell me about the day you were cursed?” 

“Nothing,” Aziraphale said. “Crowley swears it was normal.”

“It was!” Crowley insisted. 

“Obviously,” Aziraphale insisted right back, “it wasn’t it!” 

“Oh it was a classic day alright,” Crowley snapped. “You know demonic tempting, angelic thwarting, met a strange-looking fellow with warts all over his face who told me you’d never be able to see the same way again while chanting in Latin … a typical day.”

“Oh,” said Aziraphale with sudden interest. “It was probably that -- oh,” he said, with a more subdued voice. “You’re being silly again, aren’t you?”

“Being silly? Crowley demanded, offended. “I’m being demonically sarcastic.”

“Guys!” Anathema interrupted. “This is neither helpful, nor entertaining. Can you just?” she gestured vaguely between them. Both angel and demon look at her. “Can you just fuck or something? I don’t know,” she shrugged while Crowley tried not to go completely red. “It worked for me and Newt. Kind of. Doesn’t matter. You two you -- consider it.”

“No, we cannot just fuck or something,” Crowley said. “We don’t even -- have -- Aziraphale would find it unseemly.”

Aziraphale coughed. 

“What?” Crowley demanded, without turning around. 

“It’s not -- unseemly,” Aziraphale said. “Per se --”

“What?” Crowley repeated, squeezing his eyes shut. 

“I’ve, ah,” Aziraphale told Crowley’s back, relieved for the first time that Crowley couldn’t look at him that he didn’t have to look into Crowley’s eyes. “I’ve engaged in pleasures of the flesh with certain. Humans.”

“You what?” Crowley asked, at the same time as Anathema. There was that strange, high pitched note of hysteria in his voice that Aziraphale remembered well from their morning driving lesson. 

“Actually,” Anathema said, “this feels like a conversation I’m not needed for.”

“I was curious!” Aziraphale pointed out, completely ignoring Anathema. “When in Rome, and all.”

“It’s not like I’m taking time out of my busy day to help you, or anything.” Anathema wasn’t bitter. Really. She wasn’t! 

“You -- in Rome?” Crowley asked. 

“Well, not in Rome -- or I guess, there was that once after all and -- I guess twice --”

“Stop!” Crowley interrupted, voice choked. 

“I’m just going to go,” Anathema said, pointing at the door. Neither of the two men shaped beings acknowledged this in any way. A little louder she added, “Research, or something.”

“Oh, dear,” Aziraphale said to Crowley, “are you feeling alright? You’re looking wretched. Anathema, do you think you could -- oh, she’s gone. I wonder, when did she leave?” he mused to himself. 

“No,” Crowley said. “I am -- fine.”

“My dear --”

“Aziraphale!” Crowley snapped. “Please.”

Aziraphale took a step back. Usually, Aziraphale knew exactly what to do with Crowley -- what to say, how to sigh meaningfully in his direction, when to start hinting about miracles and when to start drinking wine, where to softly brush his knuckles across Crowley’s neck when he needed to calm him. But it was like Crowley -- or this thing that had happened to Crowley -- had changed the rules, without telling either of them. And Aziraphale didn’t know how to play anymore. He’d -- they’d been off-kilter, for a while now, careening roughly in unknown directions. 

He didn’t know how to steady them anymore, how to return them to course. They had drifted, he knew, but there was no script here and Crowley and his unseeing eyes locked were away behind the two pairs of extra heavy-duty sunglasses he’d taken to wearing. There were no cues to take. And Aziraphale -- 

He’d been following Crowley’s cues, best as he could keep up, for the past six thousand years. Aziraphale didn’t know what to do without Crowley, without his clues. Didn’t know how to lead this game of theirs. And when he didn’t know what to do, he fretted. And when he fretted -- well. 

“Keep your eyes closed,” Aziraphale said. 

“What are you doing?” Crowley demanded, keeping his body still. Aziraphale took a step forward and breathed out a sigh of relief when Crowley didn’t flinch. Good. This much was the same. Crowley still listened -- still obeyed. What else, Aziraphale wondered, was still there? 

“I’m fretting,” Aziraphale told him. 

“That -- Angel,” Crowley said. “You’re always fretting.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale agreed. “It’s dreadful on my shoulders.”

“What?” Crowley was beginning to feel like a parrot. 

“Oh yes,” Aziraphale agreed, absentmindedly, coming up another step closer, his breath damp against Crowley's ear. “Hurts like the devil. All these knots, great big ones.” Aziraphale set his hand on Crowley’s arm and Crowley jolted, as if electrocuted. 

“Your shoulders must hurt something awful, these days.” Aziraphale kept his hand there, still and calm and waited for Crowley to come back into himself. He rubbed his hand up Crowley’s arm, setting around his shoulder. Crowley, surprisingly, didn’t say anything. 

Aziraphale pushed his thumbs into the soft whirls of skin and tension around Crowley’s shoulders, around back, moving gently and slowly. It’s slower than Aziraphale wanted to go. Aziraphale wanted to slide his hands around Crowley’s waist, press his fingers into Crowley’s hipbone, rest his chin on Crowley’s shoulder. He wanted to step closer, wanted to fold himself fully against Crowley’s back and convince him, over the course of several long nights with an old bottle of merlot, that the so-called sins of the flesh were really good and Heavenly. 

Aziraphale didn’t do any of that. Aziraphale _couldn’t_ do any of that. Not to Crowley. Crowley wasn’t human and he’d never -- Crowley had never expressed interest in that sort of thing. He wouldn’t like it and then he wouldn’t like Aziraphale. So Aziraphale stayed on his back, moving his hands gently, deeply, feeling himself breath in with the demon. Faintly, a corner of Aziraphale’s mind became aware that Crowley was shivering. 

“Are you okay, dear?” Aziraphale asked and Crowley let out a soft moan. 

“Yesss,” he replied, voice hoarse and damp. “It’ssss nice. I --” 

“It _is_ nice, isn’t it,” Aziraphale told him, pressing his fingers in deeper, harder. “It’s just the thing for stress. I used to -- well. It’s nice. And you deserve to feel good, my dear.” Crowley shuddered under the waves of Aziraphale's hands just then, finally letting himself melt backwards against Aziraphale as if he’d been waiting six thousand years for the permission to do just that. 

He was warm. Aziraphale hadn’t expected him to be warm. Humans weren’t -- he’d forgotten that Crowley was like him. Crowley was more like a human than a demon but more like Aziraphale then like a human. Aziraphale supposed that went both ways -- they were more each other than anything else. One and the same. Inhumanly human. He breathed out. The air curled up around Crowley’s earlobe and floated away. Aziraphale closed his eyes and inhaled, this time. Smelling Crowley. 

He would know Crowley without sight or smell without any sense at all. He would know him. 

“That’ssss,” Crowley said and then he did something remarkable: he turned around. 

“You’re eyes - !” Aziraphale said on reflex. 

“They’re closed,” Crowley replied and then he stopped moving and they were there: Aziraphale, hands now resting, softly, on Crowley’s shoulders. His own face, inches from Crowley’s. Crowley’s hand, shaking and unknowing, reaching through the air and finding his face. 

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said in a voice that was a benediction, a prayer. Aziraphale stood there, suspended in that moment, eyes wide and blue and staring, staring into Crowley’s unseeing sunglasses. Trembling a little bit, he moved closer. Even the idea of air between them was too much for Aziraphale just then and he thought -- he thought -- 

“I think I figured it out,” Anathema’s voice, loud and clear from the hallway, felt like a slap. Aziraphale jerked backward at the same time Crowley spun away so that when Anathema arrived, red-faced and panting, clutching a ripped piece of paper, both Angel and Demon were on opposite sides of the room facing away from each other. 

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you liked it!! please tell me what you thought (or connect with me on tumblr at myothercarisalsoabentley which is a very dumb joke w/ myself only ty you everyone for reading bonus points && love if u caught the douglas adams reference <3

**Author's Note:**

> please please please let me know what you think!! ty so much for reading <3


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